descendants holding considerable possessions in Derbyshire;
to which, afterwards, in the time of Edward I., were added the lands
of Rochdale in Lancashire. So extensive, indeed, in those early times,
was the landed wealth of the family, that the partition of their
property, in Nottinghamshire alone, has been sufficient to establish
some of the first families of the county.

Its antiquity, however, was not the only distinction by which the name
of Byron came recommended to its inheritor; those personal merits and
accomplishments, which form the best ornament of a genealogy, seem to
have been displayed in no ordinary degree by some of his ancestors. In
one of his own early poems, alluding to the achievements of his race,
he commemorates, with much satisfaction, those "mail-covered barons"
among them,

who proudly to battle
Led their vassals from Europe to Palestine's plain.

Adding,

Near Askalon's towers John of Horiston slumbers,
Unnerved is the hand of his minstrel by death.

As there is no record, however, as far as I can discover, of any of
his ancestors having been engaged in the Holy Wars, it is possible
that he may have had no other authority for this notion than the
tradition which he found connected with certain strange groups of
heads, which are represented on the old panel-work, in some of the
chambers at Newstead. In one of these groups, consisting of three
heads, strongly carved and projecting from the panel, the centre
figure evidently represents a Saracen or Moor, with an European female
on one side of him, and a Christian soldier on the other. In a second
group, which is in one of the bed-rooms, the female occupies the
centre, while on each side is the head of a Saracen, with the eyes
fixed earnestly upon her. Of the exact meaning of these figures there
is nothing certain known; but the tradition is, I understand, that
they refer to some love-adventure, in which one of those crusaders, of
whom the young poet speaks, was engaged.

Of the more certain, or, at least, better known exploits of the
family, it is sufficient, perhaps, to say, that, at the siege of
Calais under Edward III., and on the fields, memorable in their
respective eras, of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor, the name of
the Byrons reaped honours both of rank and fame, of which their young
descendant has, in the verses just cited, shown himself proudly
conscious.

It was in the reign of He